More In Your Life

Delaware Water Gap brings $200M to Sussex County area

New Jersey Herald File photo / Turtle Beach on the Delaware River

Posted: Mar. 3, 2014 11:34 pm Updated: Mar. 7, 2014 1:00 am

By BRUCE A. SCRUTONbscruton@njherald.com

The Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area is worth more than $200 million to the region’s annual economy and last October’s federal government shutdown, which closed park facilities, cost the area an estimated $2.5 million which visitors would have spent in the area.

Those numbers were contained in two reports released Monday by the U.S. Department of Interior, which oversees the National Park Service.

The national parks are not only nationally treasured, “but help serve as economic engines for communities,” said Sally Jewell, secretary of the interior, during a telephone news conference with reporters.

“Our parks are a great investment,” she said, “For every dollar spent on the parks by Congress, there is a $10 economic benefit” to the local economy.

Jewell and National Parks Service Director Jonathan Jarvis spoke from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which drew more than 9.6 million recreation visits in 2012, according to the report.

Delaware Water Gap NRA, is in the top 10 of all national park units in terms of recreational visits each year on a list that includes the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial and two parkways, Blue Ridge and Natchez Trace.

The report showed the Delaware Water Gap had 4.97 million total visitors in 2012, and 3.4 million of them were non-local visitors.

Those non-local visitors spent more than $131 million and accounted for just less than 2,000 jobs for the region. Those jobs accounted for $82 million in wages and a total of $183 million in secondary and value-added impact to the economy.

According to the report, 71 percent of the visit allocation to the recreation area should be allocated to New Jersey.

Statewide, the study said New Jersey receives just under five million visitors to nine national park units in the state each year.

The economic studies have been done for the past 24 years and the 2012 impact report relies on data gathered by local park officials on the number of visitors each year, but uses new computer modeling to come up with the economic impact.

Jarvis said the former computer model was developed at the University of Michigan. The new program uses technical expertise from the U.S. Geologic Survey and can account for more detail, “getting down in the weeds, something that was not possible” with the older method.

Both the secretary and the director stressed that with the new model it is not possible to directly compare previous economic studies.

The park service covers more than 84 million acres across the country from major land tracts such as Yellowstone or Grand Canyon areas in the west, down to small, single-building sites like Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood home in southern Indiana.

On a system-wide basis, the park system received more than 282 million recreation visits in 2012 and visitors spent $14.7 billion in local gateway regions, or communities close to the park.

That spending generated 243,000 jobs, $9.3 billion in labor income amounting to $15.8 billion in value added. The lodging sector accounted for 40,000 of those jobs and $4.5 billion in output while 51,000 jobs were created in the restaurant and bar sector, amounting to $3 billion in output.

Superintendent John J. Donahue said in a written statement: “Here at Delaware Water Gap NRA, one of our main goals is to see the park become interwoven with the local economy in such a way as to encourage all of our neighbors to take pride in protecting their own unit of the National Park Service.”

Last summer, faced with cutbacks in the national budget known as sequestration, Donahue was forced to cut the park’s budget and eliminated the summer help who would have worked at the Milford Beach in the northern part of the park and at Kittatinny Point within the Delaware Water Gap.

The two areas remained open, however, through funding by local businesses. At Kittatinny, the canoe liveries, which used that area as a principal take-out for river trips, paid for the staff to control and pick-up trash. The visitors’ center at the point did not open, however.

At Milford Beach, Kinder Morgan, which operates the Tennessee Gas Pipeline, provided funding for clean-up crews as well as lifeguards, which allowed that area to remain open.

Donahue was not available on Monday to say what impact budget restrictions would have on the park this year.

During the news conference, Jewell acknowledged the pressure that static budgets have had on the parks.

“We have seen this decline for some time. Inflation, rising costs of salaries and utilities, are taking a toll,” she said. “Many of the parks have deferred maintenance.”

Under park service regulations, local park employees are not allowed to lobby Congress, although they can respond to questions.

Jewell said it was important for local officials “to let the federal elected officials know how important these national parks are to them.”

The study of the economic impact of the October shutdown listed 45 National Park Service units which experienced a decline of more than $2 million in visitor-related spending.

Delaware Water Gap had an average of 423,063 October visitors to the park in the preceding three years who spent $13.5 million. In October 2012, there were 343,373 visitors who spent $11 million, a 19 percent drop in visits and a loss of $2.5 million to the local economy.

Route 209 and several side roads in Pennsylvania and Sussex County Route 560, Route 615 and Millbrook Road in New Jersey were still open in the park during the shutdown. There are no services along those roads and the campgrounds at Dingman’s were closed for that 16-day period.